07/04/2013

Moments after Prop 8 fell and the first same-sex couple wed in San Francisco City Hall, the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus celebrated the marriage of Prop 8 Plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, singing to then an excerpt of a new song called "San Francisco" from Andrew Lippa's oratorio "I Am Harvey Milk", world-premiered by the chorus days before in its 35th anniversary concert Harvey Milk 2013. Also seen with the newlywed couple are San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, Human Rights Campaign President and Founder of the American Federation for Equal Rights Chad Hunter Griffin, Oscar-winning Producer Bruce Cohen and Oscar-winning Screenwriter for the movie "Milk" Dustin Lance Black. The chorus also sings "Give 'Em Hope", complemented by footage of the day when Prop 8 fell inside City Hall and that afternoon in the Castro neighborhood, as well as the wedding of Kris Perry and Sandy Stier.

Former Miami Heat player Tim Hardaway, who responded to John Amaechi's coming out in 2007 by declaring "I hate gay people," and has since become an advocate for LGBT youth, was the first petition-signer on the Equal Marriage Florida effort to put a proposed constitutional amendment legalizing same-sex marriage in the state on the November 2014 ballot, the Palm Beach Post reports:

The campaign must gather more than 680,000 signatures from registered voters to have a chance to get on the ballot.

Signing the same-sex marriage measure comes only a couple months after Hardaway reached out and endorsed NBA player Jason Collins for coming out as the first openly gay athlete in any of the major professional leagues. Hardaway’s son, Tim, Jr., also has just been drafted by the New York Knicks.

Hardaway in 2007 made news for telling a Miami radio interviewer that he didn’t like gay people and acknowledged he was homophobic. After enduring a host of financial sanctions and being barred from activities at an NBA All-Star weekend, Hardaway began a long road toward tolerance, telling another interviewer about the incident, ”I’m going to do whatever I can to correct it.”

Outserve-SLDN board co-chair Josh Seefried is stepping down and a new board is being chosen for the LGBT military group, Buzzfeed reports:

A new board of directors is coming to the LGBT military group OutServe-SLDN, but the latest moves being announced Wednesday evening are intended to allow for “a time to heal,” outgoing board co-chair Josh Seefried told BuzzFeed.

In a statement released Wednesday evening, Seefried announced his plans to step down from the board, and the board of directors announced “the formation of a transition committee, a group of four Board Members and four Chapter Leaders who will be working side-by-side to appoint new leadership to the Board of Directors and begin to see the organization in a new direction.”

Following the news this past weekend that the board had sought executive director Allyson Robinson’s resignation, some staff and board members also resigned from the organization. This led to an emergency board meeting, which then led to a statement from the board and Robinson — in which her resignation was not immediate and she said it was made of her own accord. Several OutServe-SLDN chapters remained unsatisfied and, as The Bilerico Project noted, demanded that Seefried leave the board.